Gazing at Failure: Investigating Human Gaze in Response to Robot Failure in Collaborative Tasks

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Tabatabaei, Ramtin, Kostakos, Vassilis, Johal, Wafa
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Tabatabaei, Ramtin
Kostakos, Vassilis
Johal, Wafa
author_facet Tabatabaei, Ramtin
Kostakos, Vassilis
Johal, Wafa
contents Robots are prone to making errors, which can negatively impact their credibility as teammates during collaborative tasks with human users. Detecting and recovering from these failures is crucial for maintaining effective level of trust from users. However, robots may fail without being aware of it. One way to detect such failures could be by analysing humans' non-verbal behaviours and reactions to failures. This study investigates how human gaze dynamics can signal a robot's failure and examines how different types of failures affect people's perception of robot. We conducted a user study with 27 participants collaborating with a robotic mobile manipulator to solve tangram puzzles. The robot was programmed to experience two types of failures -- executional and decisional -- occurring either at the beginning or end of the task, with or without acknowledgement of the failure. Our findings reveal that the type and timing of the robot's failure significantly affect participants' gaze behaviour and perception of the robot. Specifically, executional failures led to more gaze shifts and increased focus on the robot, while decisional failures resulted in lower entropy in gaze transitions among areas of interest, particularly when the failure occurred at the end of the task. These results highlight that gaze can serve as a reliable indicator of robot failures and their types, and could also be used to predict the appropriate recovery actions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_16899
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Gazing at Failure: Investigating Human Gaze in Response to Robot Failure in Collaborative Tasks
Tabatabaei, Ramtin
Kostakos, Vassilis
Johal, Wafa
Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
Robots are prone to making errors, which can negatively impact their credibility as teammates during collaborative tasks with human users. Detecting and recovering from these failures is crucial for maintaining effective level of trust from users. However, robots may fail without being aware of it. One way to detect such failures could be by analysing humans' non-verbal behaviours and reactions to failures. This study investigates how human gaze dynamics can signal a robot's failure and examines how different types of failures affect people's perception of robot. We conducted a user study with 27 participants collaborating with a robotic mobile manipulator to solve tangram puzzles. The robot was programmed to experience two types of failures -- executional and decisional -- occurring either at the beginning or end of the task, with or without acknowledgement of the failure. Our findings reveal that the type and timing of the robot's failure significantly affect participants' gaze behaviour and perception of the robot. Specifically, executional failures led to more gaze shifts and increased focus on the robot, while decisional failures resulted in lower entropy in gaze transitions among areas of interest, particularly when the failure occurred at the end of the task. These results highlight that gaze can serve as a reliable indicator of robot failures and their types, and could also be used to predict the appropriate recovery actions.
title Gazing at Failure: Investigating Human Gaze in Response to Robot Failure in Collaborative Tasks
topic Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16899